Here is a quick sample (and a test) of what I will be posting on the Wiki.
NOTE:
I am assuming that if I mention something like my "DSLR" you will know that I am talking about the only DSLR that I own, mentioned on the equipment page. Plus, all pictures taken by you I know are through LRGB filters.
Also, when I say something like 9 minutes RGB, that means total time of all three RGB filters. So for example, divided by those filters we get 3 minutes per filter, plus the luminance.
Image 1: Messier 42 "Great Orion Nebula"
Info: Photographed at GPN on February 8. Stacked a 15" and a (test shot) 5" (total 20-second stack) shot at 3200 ISO on a Meade 10" SC with my Sony DSLR. I was able to brighten nebulosity, enhance color detail, extracted M43, and virtually eliminated light-pollution from the image. Here is a before and after of the shot. I used GIMP only. Adjusted by using the following tools: Curves, Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Unsharp Mask.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Before After
On a quick note, one may notice the "wings" of disappear in the After image. I have noticed, to the contrary, that they still exist as the image varies from whatever monitor it is displayed on.
Image 2: Messier 81 "Bodes's Nebula"
Info: Taken by the miraculous Astronomy teacher Mrs. Herrold with a Meade 14" SC with a SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD way over in the pristine skies of Arizona. Assembled the image with mild processing (to improvements in quality) to create a prototype image for a benchmark to see where I have started this class; by the end of the year I will compare the image with a new one. The final image was un-naturally red, so I desaturated the red to gray while keeping what little blue I had. Stacked all images in GIMP manually and combined RGB in SalsaJ. Adjusted colors mildly. Heavily used levels to reduce light-pollution grain. As a result, the core actually brightened. Desaturated Red.
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 3: Orion at a class 5 sky
Info: Made a trip to a relative's home up North near Richmond. Taken on November 24 during a new-moon phase. At the time of the shot (12:27AM), Orion was already subjected to the nearest city lights in the South-East. The image consists of five 30-second exposures at ISO 400 with an old Sony P73 camera. I know this doesn't really qualify for credit, but I just wanted to share it. After combining the shots, I worked my magic to nearly eliminate light pollution while brightening the stars and the nebula. My "magic" was sampling all the pink glow from the image and desaturating by color selection. Used levels to bring colors away from un-natural colors like yellow to a little more familiar green shade. Used GIMP only.
Requirements:
Total Exposure time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Before: After:
Image 4: Veil Nebula (NGC 6995)
Info: Taken by Mrs. Herrold. Edited multiple times to get different results. Photographed at Mrs. Herrold's observatory (14" SC with SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD)
on December 9, 2011. At first I did an experiment by combining each coded R, G, and B (for example "188R, 188G, 188B") and combined them again in Salsa J. So really, this is kind of a false-color image.. Other than that, there wasn't anything else that I did with the first image. With the second, I went on a more traditional route by combining the frames in GIMP, and combing RGB in SalsaJ. From there I adjusted Levels and Curves to my liking.
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 5: My Fantasy
Info: Combination of two images (7 minutes and 30 seconds of my Milky Way picture (shot over the exceptional skies of Thompson Park, Northern Michigan) combined with a shot of some houses in my backyard). The original image was done in GIMP, consisting of 15 color stacks. I erased (literately erased with copy/pasting grain textures) star trails, and brought nebulosity with curves. Used unsharp masks several times. Added the houses by taking a day-time image of houses in my back yard, and adjusted levels to extremes (so only black, featureless, silhouettes remain). Added both with the overlay feature.
Photographed with Sony POS P73 at 400ISO; fifteen 30s exposures, stacked. Milkyway photographed on July 10, 2010 at 2:10AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 6: Mars (Lo-res)
Info: Lo-res shot of Mars through my telescope (400ISO 1/25s) in my backyard. Only the ice cap is visible in this primitive shot. Taken with my telescope (Zhumell Z8) and the Sony DSLR. Cropped this single image (that's why this 10-megapixel shot looks so lo-res). Brought details by adjusting color curves to extremes (resulting in a strange, red disk, that I erased with a black marker). Adjusted color curves for hours until I got the perfect shade of orange, while preserving features with a darker, green tint. Naturally, I applied an unsharp-mask.
Photographed on January 8, 2012 at 7:29AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 7: Jupiter
Info: My best shot yet of the infamous binary-planet system Jupiter AB. Jokes aside, this is a comparison before and after some quick edits. Taken through the EP with the old Sony (P73) at 1/30s 400ISO in my Zhumell Z8 in the backyard.
Photographed on October 30, 2011 at 4:13AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 8: Saturn
Info: My best picture of Saturn from last year through the 8mm EP of my Zhumell with the old P73 in my backyard. 1/8s 400ISO.
Photographed on May 21, 2011 at around 12:18AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 9: Moon ring
Info. On a cold, (partly) cloudy night last November, I was out during a large moon along with our winter-time buddy Jupiter. Like many times before under this moon and weather conditions, I observed a phenomenon known as a Moon ring. The ring itself is caused by light from the moon refracting off of ice particles high in the freezing clouds above. Because of this, Moon rings only appear on the coldest winter nights. Taken with Sony P73. Five seconds at 400 ISO.
Photographed on November 12, 2011 at about 2:27AM in my backyard.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
Image 10: Messier 13 "Great Hercules Cluster"
Info: Took 20 Luminances and 10 (for every) RGB. Applied new skills such as stretching though levels (GIMP alternative), Color balancing using color levels, cutting over-exposure by "burning," using brush subtract layering, and using the lasso to cut out specific bright regions. Didn't come out too fantastic.
Photographed at Mrs. Herrold's observatory on May 12, 2008 (14" SC with SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD)
Info: I was out one clear night with my DSLR camera in my backyard, and I was wondering "what can a dark frame do for me?" I thought a dark frame would eradicate noise in the image, and so naturally I took many many frames at the same exposure times, ISO, white-balance, etc. I applied these frames only to discover that they simply corrected hot pixels on my CCD chip in my SLR. They did not reduce the noise caused by local light sources. So after this, I went on to discover that they can be used further to enhance images by applying them as overlays. I'm not sure what the purpose of this function is, but according to my image, It reduced the severity of light pollution in my original shot of Orion and greatly increased contrast with the nebula M42. As you can see in the blow-up, Messier 42 is accompanied by M43, sprouts wings, the outer-loop, and even that dark edge into the nebula. This is by far the most detailed wide-field image of Orion's belt region to date.
Photographed March 25, 2012 at 8:00PM
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Settings:
Focal length: 55mm
Exposure: 13s
F/ratio: F/5.6
ISO: 800
Taken at medium resolution (5.2Mp).
Image 12: Polaris AB
Info: I wanted to show you all a pretty interesting picture of this star. It's interesting because it takes into account the motion of the sky, and how it "moves" the least at the poles. According to my theory, I could have taken a shot of Polaris, without a motorized mount with a long exposure, without star trails in the image. The only processing I did was making the background a bit darker to eliminate light pollution. There is excessive noise because it is at a rather high ISO of (1600 or 2400) and a 30 second shot.
Photographed March 16 2012, at 9:44PM (at Ligett field) through my Zhumell telescope (w. barlow lens) and Sony DSLR.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 13: Waxing Crescent
Info: By popular demand, here is my great image of the Waxing Crescent Moon. I venerate this as one of my best shots I have taken. This was back in the day where I only had the P73, the Zhumell, and GIMP alone. Today, I have made several corrections from the original, including but not limited to: Orientation flip, desaturation (remove unwanted yellow color and chromatic abberation), corrected color (improved contrast around the terminator), adjusted color levels (brighter regions no longer appear to be overexposed), and who couldn't forget an un-sharp mask. I don't know why they could possibly have different sizes
Photographed in my backyard on April 8, 2011 at 9:57PM.
Total Exposure time: 1/50s at 200 ISO.
Requirements:
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Before/After:
Image 14: Messier 97 "Owl Nebula"
Info: After weeks of difficulty, I finally got a good image worthy of editing. The old images were overexposed shots of the background noise. So this is also the first image I did editing in MaximDL. I stacked the images 10 for each color filter for the RGB and added the luminance frame (10 Luminances) later in GIMP. For the RGBs, I used filters. The filters (Gradient, "Happy", and others that I don't know) all did the work for me. I only used the screen-stretch to get what I wanted. I did use GIMP in the final combination for adjusting color levels. No unsharp masks. Taken with 14" SC with Mrs. Herrold's SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD, at her Arizona observatory on December 26, 2009 at 5:30AM.
Total Exposure time: 10 minutes RGB, + 40 seconds Luminance
Requirements:
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 15: IC 1396 "Elephant Trunk" (Misty Mountain)
Info: These RAWs were taken at the Misty Mountain observatory on 10/06/04. I downloaded the 40MB per-file LRGB and stacked them, edited, and combined them to this less-than-modest result. I still have no idea as to how the owner of these shots created such fantastic results with the same images. In GIMP and SalsaJ, not one tool was able to bring out the incredible red nebulousness as seen in the final result. I am oblivious to their technique. This is simply the best of what I can make with the "traditional" route of limited adjustments in GIMP and SalsaJ with the Levels and Color curves. Perhaps I am simply not proficient enough. Never the less, it is an interesting shot of this dark nebula. Shot with a 32" Ritchey-Chretein at F/7.2 Prime-focus with a SBIG STL-11000 CCD. According to SalsaJ however, these are single 300s RGBs with a single 300s Luminance. So maybe it's just that instead. Specifically, I tried to independently process the RGBs, but this resulted in an unbalanced background color. So instead, I went to GIMP and went through the optimizations (Levels and curves), and checking the results. In the end, I came out with this mixture of Black sky, Red nebula, and yellow stars. In the first image (not posted), I actually misplaced the Green for Red, but I think this time it actually works. Applied a weak un-sharp mask.
Total Exposure time: 15 minutes RGB, + 5 minutes Luminance.
_
Quarter 4
Image 16: Ursa Major (The "Big Dipper")
Info: My first shots taken at NRAO that I intended for processing. Why did I take a shot at such an everyday constellation? I was inspired by an image found on Astronomy Magazine's APOD, which showed the Big Dipper almost as you see here. I am partly unsurprised at the quantity of stars versus the shots that I have taken in my own yard. To my surprise, this was the clearest night (first night) versus the last night. It was partly cloudy this night, but between the clouds in was nearly 4/5 (or better) transparency. So what did I do? To even get the shots that I wanted, I took five 30 second exposures and stacked them. Man, do I really like the burst mode on that camera. All I have to do is set the exposure, the 10s timer, press shutter, and walk away. The camera does everything. It takes five consecutive pictures (does not wait to process between images; it actually processes the shots while it takes the next picture). So after going inside and getting some refreshments, I walked out to see the excellent results that are now appear before you on this webpage. Of course processing wasn't as easy. There was a natural green tone (I have observed this at every dark sky I have ever been to) which I had to balance. I adjusted color curves and levels to improve my signal:noise ratio. The beautiful blue stars that you see are not entirely natural. I actually added the glow effect by using the "supernova" light effect and changed the size/brightness/color to each star's characteristics. Erased dead pixels by copy/pasting noise over them. Works every time. Oh, and by the way, can you spot M101? I know it's not very clear, but it's there. If you know where to look (look in stellarium) then you can see a faint blob right where it should be. It's not really a surprise though, seeing as M101 is relatively bright at 7.70 magnitude. Oh, and I just found out recently that you can also spot the Whirlpool M51 too. Although dimmer at magnitude 8.4, this object is much more compact that M101, meaning it's light is compressed and therefore easier to see. It is best seen on the original (uncompressed) image.
As far as processing goes, its once again the same straight forward method. Go into levels, adjust the dark input until background light is dissipated. Then, you can advance the white input to add brightness. Adjust the middle to your liking. With curves, I further attempted to limit background light by putting down the "dark area" of the curve histogram (this is the main one, not RGB). I then adjusted curves independently for RGB. I particular, I upped the blue on the far right of the histogram to increase the amount of blue in the image. That didn't work so well, so I went to "color balance" and upped the blue in the image to help with the overall appearance. I have noticed that blue pictures look better than others, so I stuck with the blue colors instead of any kind of green or red. Also, blue represents the color of stars better. Applied a default unsharp mask with the radius increased only slightly (+0.2).
Photographed on April 11, 1:38AM.
Total exposure: 2 minutes, 30 seconds @ ISO 400, F/4.5 with a Sony a230 DSLR
Image 17: GBT Panorama
Info: I was originally going to make and all-sky map of the constellations in NRAO, but apparently 30-40 seconds is too much of a time interval, in which the stars will shift too much to be captured all on the same picture at once. So instead, I settled with two images that both had the GBT (or at least a part) in them. In the initial compile, I knew it wouldn't be too good of an image. First of all, they are single-stacks, so of course the stars won't be too impressive. Second, the CCD's bias will make the edge of one frame "stick out" when next to the other. Third, the ISO is too high. Although though the camera is rated for a maximum of 3200 ISO, the camera starts to get severe noise in long-exposures in even 400 or 200 (only in very, very long exposures) ISO. Fourth, I took these at medium resolution (5.2Mp), so real detail will be restricted from view. Fifth, it wasn't 100% clear. It was kind of hazy, which may block out stars (but will also add a nice effect to the image, as you can see it reflects near-by cities and also appears an opaque shadow as it passes over the Monongahela forest. Photographed on April 12, 11:47PM.
Total exposure: 30s exposure @ 800 ISO, F/3.5 with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 18: (GBT) Stellar Rains
Info: This image was somewhat of a disappointment; and it is clear why. To my exact expectations, it would not be even close to 100% clarity one the one "clear" that we were supposed to get. Oh well. That didn't stop me from experimenting with the camera's bulb setting, and pushing farther than I ever had a chance to do so. With such dark skies, I was confident that I could easily take exposures in terms of minutes (rather than seconds) and still get trails without excessive skyglow. Although the effect is still apparent in this image (due to haze), it is still an adequate example as I was still able to capture (about) eight minutes of star movement. Some interesting facts about this picture: The GBT was moving during the exposure. This is actually two shots (a single 6-minute plus a 2-minute), requiring me to draw-in the gaps made by the processing time of the camera. Even though it was cloudy, it was still 6x darker than my sky here in Harper Woods. The Milky Way is not in this image. We had to walk 100 feet away (into the airfield) from the observing deck to get away from the sun-like streetlights. We were getting the stars while everyone else was hiking in the freezing cold. Seen on the right, the star that fades is going behind a cloud. The 6-minute exposure used was the longest single exposure I have ever taken (with exception to the 500-second test shot I took in my room). Taken at NRAO on 4/12/2012 at 10:54PM
Total exposure: 8-minutes (@ 200 ISO, 28mm F/4.5) with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 19: The Polaris Swing
Info: After I was finally done imaging the GBT, I made an improvised attempt to capture star motion around Polaris. This is my first attempt ever. As you can see, it is very close to rubbish, so I will admit. As far as stacking went, it was relatively simple. Just add the stacks as they are (no rotations necessary). Before I started getting crazy with color alterations, I first had to deal with the strange vertical line phenomenon. I don't have an explanation for this, but the 5.6Mp shots that I took were all patterned, like flannel. There were annoying vertical and horizontal (well, those weren't so bad as the vertical ones) lines that threatened to destroy the entire image. However, GIMP came to the rescue. I had noticed a "Deinterlace" feature that mostly eliminated these lines at a cost of sharpness. I also experimented with "Despeckle," but got nowhere. So continuing, I then started attempts to rid an awful shade of green (commonly noticed on all of the sky-scenes I have taken at dark skies), only to bring more colors into the mix. At least it's not as bad as it used to be. You can still detect lots of green, but not there is red near the bottom left, and blue in the upper corners. I decided these were the best colors, or else I may have to settle with some boring B&W pictures with no feeling or mood to the scene. On the other hand, I kind of like the random shades, that give the image some artistic value (IMO). My best explanation on why this is crap is the weather. Much like the GBT startrails, there was an excessive amount of haze that floated about making the perfect exposure difficult. What's even worse is that you have no sense on what would be the best value of White Balance in skies as dark as these. Used the 5-shot burst mode five times to accumulate 25 individual frames for stacking. Photographed at the NRAO observatory on 4/12/2012 at 11:24PM
Total exposure: 12 minutes, 30seconds (twenty-five 30s exposures, stacked) at ISO 200, F/3.5 with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 20: Moon; HDR
*THIS WAS ALL DONE IN GIMP ADDITION 2.6*
Info: Lo and behold, one of the few images of the Moon that you will ever see that is neither under or over exposed. As you can see, this image incorporates both faint and bright elements. The unlit side of the moon is preserved, while the face is near perfect exposure. So I bet you are wondering: How did he do that? Well, thankfully, it is very simple, and I believe that there is no way to over-simplify the process. There is nothing special about this image in terms of exposure. I did not use some special filter, the PERFECT exposure (some ridiculous fraction like 384/1 instead of 500/1). I did not even use a special camera/telescope lens. Just my trusty Dob (with 30mm EP) and the Sony DSLR. What is special, however, is that this is not ONE image. It is actually three. So, you must wonder, what layer settings did I use. Was it addition? Subtraction? A combination of two, or other filters? No, to anyone's surprise, I actually kept my hands off the layer settings (Normal mode). What I did mess with was the order of exposure, and a 'new' tool called "Layer Mask." Now I don't know exactly what a "Layer Mask" does, but what I do know is that you have to mess with it. Since the tutorial I was reading was designed for Photoshop, I had to do some digging around myself. I ended up with the (inverted) "Grayscale copy of image" option. Apply this twice, and then invert the color of one of the layers. Concerning the layers and exposures, you start with what you are working with. Take one image at the "correct" (it is not really correct, your light meter will lie to you because it doesn't know what is considered "correct" in such an extreme case) exposure . Then, take two more shots at slower and quicker exposures. In the tutorial, they say that +0.7 and -0.7 exposures are adequate for capturing all the details. However, this is astronomy. Our cases are much, much more extreme. For example, you may have to shoot more than +2.0 or -2.0 to get the right balance in such an extreme. In this scenario, the exposures range greatly; from a 1/125 second base, with a (+2.0) 1/2 second and a (-2.0) 1/320 second exposure. To make things simple, I name each file according to the exposure. The +0.0 is "Neutral," the +2.0 "over," and the -2.0 is "under." In GIMP, I place the neutral in first, then the under, and finally the over. Now apply the same mask twice (described above), and invert the "under" frame with the color tools. Behold, you have now created a masterpiece (although this is still in the primitive stages with much work to be done). Below the Moon are the under/over exposure with the neutral. Tip: Make sure your images are aligned!
Okay, so apparently I didn't explain this well enough.
You will use GIMP, because I do not posses that program and therefore have limited access.
The basic concept:
You will be taking THREE images of the same object, with DIFFERENT exposures. The exposure difference can be purely arbitrary, but generally the idea is to keep a range that isn't so extreme that one picture is black from under exposing and the other is just white. In photography, we have a Light Meter. We use this meter to expect how our pictures will turn out in terms of brightness for the "correct exposure." The scale ranges from -2 to +2, with .33 increments. So, for example:
When I am talking about shifts above, I am talking about upping or lowering the exposure so the meter meets +2 or -2 or whatever value you choose. Again, it is your choice. In this particular shot, I did 0 +/-2 increment shifts.
Total exposure: Combination of 1/125 second, 1/2 second, and 1/320 second.
Took all of these shots on 4/27/2012! Used a Sony a230 DSLR with a Zhumell 8" Dob
Image 21: Der Mond
Info: All of the same steps were taken from the HDR moon. In fact, this is the same thing, but edited further to what I am kind of looking for. I have not mastered the art of getting everything, so I shot for another goal to make something a little more to appreciate. As you can see, there is a sharp contrast in comparison to the above HDR moon. All I did, was use the level tool in GIMP to adjust the black limit to void everything you see in the picture, and limit white to the preserved white you see at the far right in this image. I also desaturated the image to eliminate obvious false color from camera and lens defects. I also rotated the image to what we are used to see, and cropped the image to a square.
This is the exact same picture as above. So naturally, the dates and exposure times are the same, as well as the camera.
Image 22: Messier 17 "Omega Nebula"
Info: Boy, what a good choice that was! As a visual observer, I often take the time to admire the Summer's best show of nebulae in our galaxy. Of the many nebulae, M17 must be one of the more astounding objects within the heart of the galaxy. I am glad to see that M17 is just as pleasing in this photo as it is visually. From my experience, this is probably the best quality of RAWS taken my Mrs. Herrold. Maybe it's just because M17 is a bright source, I don't know. Any way, it is a great image and was very fun to process in no more than a half an hour. I was going to use a consistent amount of stacks, but I then realized that colors would be unbalanced, and the Luminance would be very dim. So instead, I used all of the provided images to end up with this. Used color balance to eliminate blue/green background gradient. Enhanced reds. Applied a sample of "Tone Mapping" and "Levels."
The levels were used to get rid of some background noise, and the black limiter reduced pixel values so that I could still keep some nebulosity while eliminating most of the background. White was adjusted to bring out more of the nebula.
Taken by Mrs. Herrold on June 22, 2012. (DPO, AZ) SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD, 14" Schmidt Telescope
Total exposure time: 3 minutes, 24 seconds (one minute each for R, G, B, and 24s CLEAR)
Image 23: Stargaze
Info: I will have to admit, I think this is probably one of my favorite images. It didn't dome out as well as I wanted, and as usual I had to do a lot of work just to get it to where it is now. Something I am very fond of is the need to finish startrails in between exposures. It is a very tedious process, copying and pasting stars from each exposure to connect them, but otherwise it would look very unprofessional and incomplete. So, into the meat of the image, this is a stack of 24 30-second ISO 200 exposures (12 minutes total)(at F/3.5), for a total exposure time of 12 minutes, which are not aligned to show the Milky Way in a still position. Rather, we see how our Earth's rotation leaves the streaks of stars behind. My biggest problem with this shot (besides finishing the star trails) was getting the images aligned after moving the tripod. I had to stack them in groups of 3 (8exposures each) to get not only the movement corrected, but to also keep GIMP running (it freaks out if you load more than 8 images when the memory usage exceeds 2GB of RAM). Normally, I would extensively use curves to bring out more detail and kill light pollution. This time, in these skies, I didn't need to, so I kept it how it is and focus on the more technical problems such as dead pixels and stripes in the image. The vertical stripes (some are still shown if you know where to look) were partially eliminated by the deinterlace function. I kept default values because the other options did nothing. To reduce the hot pixels I just copy/pasted random segments of the image around. This was particularly easy when removing them in the tree silhouettes where all I have to do is just color them black. Visible in this image are: Cygnus, Red lights, many tripods, Zach, the 20" scope, and me.
Photographed by me on 5/19/2012 at Gladwin, MI. with my Sony a230 DSLR
Image 24: Messier 101
Like most RAWS that I receive, I get serious doubt about their potential. I have learned from this image (in particular) to ignore the suggestion of a bad image in the future. This image was especially daunting because it was actually MISSING one RAW from green and blue, the main colors for this image. The process to this picture was the usual for just about every other picture: Put all reds in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. So for example I have one picture that is now comprised of seven RAWS for one shot. Repeat this for green, blue, and luminance. Put all greens in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. Put all blues in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. Put all luminances in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings... Now make sure you have all four images (Luminace, Red, Green, Blue) saved as flat TIFF files (it will ask you to merge or flat when you "Save as..."). They are all separate. Since my setup consists of only the primitive programs, I will be using SalsaJ for the color RGB combination. This process is simple, but is complicated by automatic features that actually disrupt the process. Before you start creating the color image, open each the final red green and blue images you just made in GIMP. I do this by keeping a folder open (containing each RGB file), and dragging and dropping the file into SalsaJ. Now you will notice that the colors may be exaggerated or be untrue to what you made in GIMP. To bypass this, go to the "brightness and contrast." At the bottom of the menu, click "Reset." Do this for every image that you pull up (Red, Green, Blue).You will now have the original pictures you had just made in GIMP. Next, go to "Image," then "Stacks," then click "Images to stack." When you do this, the color planes will be out of alignment due to faults and other errors. To fix this, go to "Plugins," click "Align R/G/B planes." You will get a menu which asks for what plane you wish to adjust. Start with the one that is mostly out of alignment. With the pixel value defined in the box, just click the arrows until you see stars aligning with other the other planes. Do the same thing with any other planes that are not aligned fully. Once this is complete, you are ready to save as a composite RGB file, which will define color in the image. Click "File," then "Save As," and hit the type of file you want. I will suggest TIFF because it is much more friendly to other programs than RAW FITS files. Now you are ready to go back to GIMP for fixing the luminance and adding color. Open your Luminance in GIMP. This is what mine looked like just from adding everything. No editing:
It's meh, okay, but nothing close to excellent. The first thing to do is adjust the color Levels. Click "Colors," and then "Levels..." To eliminate the grey background, increase the dark value of the "Input." A good value for this particular image is 24. You will notice that the background is indeed darker, but so is the galaxy you are trying to bring out. To resurrect it, reduce the white value in "Input." This value should be around 60 for this specific image. The middle mover is less important, but you should adjust it to your liking. I would suggest the value to be about 0.8 or higher. You should get something like this:
Huge improvement, no doubt. Now you can add color! Before you do, click "Image," then "Mode," then "RGB."
With this file still open, open the RGB file you just made in SalsaJ. Because the RGB is a lo-res color file, you have to scale it to the luminance. So click the "Scale Tool" in your "Toolbox." Still in your Luminance, on the upper left part of the screen, it should mention the resolution.
In the scale tool, put this resolution in the values after clicking the image with this tool. Click "Scale." Reduce Opacity (with Layers Window) to see if the layers are still aligned. Odds are that the image will still be out of alignment. Move them into place with the "Move Tool" (found in Toolbox). To apply color, select a Layer function/mode. Rather than some other images, I actually used the Overlay mode instead of "Addition." Some brightness will disappear. To bring it back, once again go to into "Levels..." Bring down the white value in "Input" to about 72 for example.
You may notice that the red emission nebulae are absent. Bring them back with color Curves. Hopefully you can learn more about this with Alison, but what I found is that values at the end of the histogram adjust colors that are separate from the rest of the image. Follow this as an example:
That's pretty much it. That is the exact method I followed, not just for this image but for practically every other shot here. For any other adjustments, I would recommend that you Save and Flatten the image first. I did so, and here are the before and after results. Not much to me, but you're the critic.
Imaged by Mrs. Herrold at DPO with her 14" Schmidt and a SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD on January 19, 2009 for a total exposure time of 180s luminance, 105s Red, 90s Green, and 90s Blue (7 minutes, 45 seconds)
Image 25: Jupiter Redux
I recently took a look back at some rejected pictures of Jupiter through my DSLR, and after some tweaking, they are easily comparable to my best shot taken with the older Sony. They feature the GRS quite well, as you can see. Sifting through these images quickly, I did not bother to look for hidden detail. One night, when I was bored of watching the clouds go by, I looked at some of these pictures on my camera. Zooming in, I noticed some detail. when I tilted the screen (darker image), even more detail appeared. The next day, I put this image in GIMP and did some magic. I lowered the color curve and saw detail come into the picture. It's still not the greatest, but it's very close to what I've made so far with the older camera. Naturally, I used an Unsharp mask (default settings) to bring more into the image. Just recently I increased the color curves on the right end to make the image brighter while preserving detail. Then, I took another shot, increased brightness enough to bring out moons, and pasted the new Jupiter over the former place of the planet (on the brighter shot). Image cropped and rotated (inverted).
Taken through my Z8 telescope on 12/10/2011 at 11:30PM at my house. both shots are at 1/30s exposure times at 800ISO with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 26: Messier 11
Due to the absence of requested files, I am forced to process a different image. Downloaded from Misti Mountain, this is an image of Messier 11, the Wild Duck Cluster. Since the observatory only provides the single frames (red, green, blue, and luminance), this picture was very easy. All I had to do was put the frames into SalsaJ. Man, that equipment is flawless! None of those frames were out of alignment. Incredible. So anyways, I combine them and save as .TIFF and start on their qualities in GIMP. In GIMP, I was amazed with how bright these objects can get. With the absence of light pollution, I can shoot the light levels so high that the image is four times brighter without consequence. Of course I might have to settle down the background noise with a little black, as seen in this screenshot:
VS...
As you can see, without these limits, I am able to really push forward to make an astounding addition to the picture. For the final touch, I did the same with the Luminance, and balanced color to blue rather than the ugly green you see here. The final picture is made of this and the luminance with the "Color" layer mode.
Taken at the Misti Mountain Observatory for an 11-minute clear, 6-minute Red, 6-minute Green, and 6-minute Blue (29 minutes) on 8/30/04
Shot with a 32" Ritchey-Chretein at F/7.2 Prime-focus with a SBIG STL-11000 CCD.
Image 27: Transit of Venus:
Ah, look at that! You'd ought to know what this is. If you don't I'm assuming you never got to witness the event. On June 5, the planet Venus passed in front of the solar disk for the only time in our lifetimes. It will not occur again until at least December 2117. Visually observing the event, however, was probably much more fascinating than what you see in this picture. Just seeing it for a split second while other people are rushing to see it themselves was amazing. There it is, just floating in front of the sun. Being used to how small Venus appears in the high during twilight, I was surprised to see how big this sphere was when it became a silhouette in this event. This event reminds me much like that scene in the movie Sunshine. Have you seen it? You should have. By no doubt were we amazed just as the people in this scene:
As far as processing goes, I did little because it's not like a normal astrophoto. The first thing I did was to apply an Unsharp mask with default settings. To make the image a little more realistic, I did something Bob Berta showed us before. I desaturated the image, and then colorized the picture to the color you see here. I then reduced the light curves to see more of the sunspot details, and possibly some solar grainage. I don't know if it really is grain, because my camera (even at low ISO speeds) has a bad tendency to create lots of noise/grain.
Photographed at GPN, with a 90mm Mak-Cas at prime-focus (with white-light solar filter) coupled with a Sony a230 DSLR (1/60s, ISO 400, F/13.8) on June 5 2012.
Note: Those are not rings! By the time clouds cleared, the sun was low, including these telephone wires and a tree in the picture.
NOTE:
I am assuming that if I mention something like my "DSLR" you will know that I am talking about the only DSLR that I own, mentioned on the equipment page. Plus, all pictures taken by you I know are through LRGB filters.Also, when I say something like 9 minutes RGB, that means total time of all three RGB filters. So for example, divided by those filters we get 3 minutes per filter, plus the luminance.
Image 1: Messier 42 "Great Orion Nebula"
Info: Photographed at GPN on February 8. Stacked a 15" and a (test shot) 5" (total 20-second stack) shot at 3200 ISO on a Meade 10" SC with my Sony DSLR. I was able to brighten nebulosity, enhance color detail, extracted M43, and virtually eliminated light-pollution from the image. Here is a before and after of the shot. I used GIMP only. Adjusted by using the following tools: Curves, Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Unsharp Mask.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Before
After
On a quick note, one may notice the "wings" of disappear in the After image. I have noticed, to the contrary, that they still exist as the image varies from whatever monitor it is displayed on.
Image 2: Messier 81 "Bodes's Nebula"
Info: Taken by the miraculous Astronomy teacher Mrs. Herrold with a Meade 14" SC with a SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD way over in the pristine skies of Arizona. Assembled the image with mild processing (to improvements in quality) to create a prototype image for a benchmark to see where I have started this class; by the end of the year I will compare the image with a new one. The final image was un-naturally red, so I desaturated the red to gray while keeping what little blue I had. Stacked all images in GIMP manually and combined RGB in SalsaJ. Adjusted colors mildly. Heavily used levels to reduce light-pollution grain. As a result, the core actually brightened. Desaturated Red.
Total Exposure time: 20 minutes RGB, + 7 minutes, 20 seconds Luminance (27.33 minutes)
Photographed January 19, 2009
Requirements:
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 3: Orion at a class 5 sky
Info: Made a trip to a relative's home up North near Richmond. Taken on November 24 during a new-moon phase. At the time of the shot (12:27AM), Orion was already subjected to the nearest city lights in the South-East. The image consists of five 30-second exposures at ISO 400 with an old Sony P73 camera. I know this doesn't really qualify for credit, but I just wanted to share it. After combining the shots, I worked my magic to nearly eliminate light pollution while brightening the stars and the nebula. My "magic" was sampling all the pink glow from the image and desaturating by color selection. Used levels to bring colors away from un-natural colors like yellow to a little more familiar green shade. Used GIMP only.
Requirements:
Total Exposure time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Before:
Image 4: Veil Nebula (NGC 6995)
Info: Taken by Mrs. Herrold. Edited multiple times to get different results. Photographed at Mrs. Herrold's observatory (14" SC with SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD)
on December 9, 2011. At first I did an experiment by combining each coded R, G, and B (for example "188R, 188G, 188B") and combined them again in Salsa J. So really, this is kind of a false-color image.. Other than that, there wasn't anything else that I did with the first image. With the second, I went on a more traditional route by combining the frames in GIMP, and combing RGB in SalsaJ. From there I adjusted Levels and Curves to my liking.
Total Exposure time: 10 minutes, 48 seconds RGB, + 2 minutes Luminance (12.8 minutes).
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 5: My Fantasy
Info: Combination of two images (7 minutes and 30 seconds of my Milky Way picture (shot over the exceptional skies of Thompson Park, Northern Michigan) combined with a shot of some houses in my backyard). The original image was done in GIMP, consisting of 15 color stacks. I erased (literately erased with copy/pasting grain textures) star trails, and brought nebulosity with curves. Used unsharp masks several times. Added the houses by taking a day-time image of houses in my back yard, and adjusted levels to extremes (so only black, featureless, silhouettes remain). Added both with the overlay feature.
Photographed with Sony POS P73 at 400ISO; fifteen 30s exposures, stacked. Milkyway photographed on July 10, 2010 at 2:10AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 6: Mars (Lo-res)
Info: Lo-res shot of Mars through my telescope (400ISO 1/25s) in my backyard. Only the ice cap is visible in this primitive shot. Taken with my telescope (Zhumell Z8) and the Sony DSLR. Cropped this single image (that's why this 10-megapixel shot looks so lo-res). Brought details by adjusting color curves to extremes (resulting in a strange, red disk, that I erased with a black marker). Adjusted color curves for hours until I got the perfect shade of orange, while preserving features with a darker, green tint. Naturally, I applied an unsharp-mask.
Photographed on January 8, 2012 at 7:29AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 7: Jupiter
Info: My best shot yet of the infamous binary-planet system Jupiter AB. Jokes aside, this is a comparison before and after some quick edits. Taken through the EP with the old Sony (P73) at 1/30s 400ISO in my Zhumell Z8 in the backyard.
Photographed on October 30, 2011 at 4:13AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 8: Saturn
Info: My best picture of Saturn from last year through the 8mm EP of my Zhumell with the old P73 in my backyard. 1/8s 400ISO.
Photographed on May 21, 2011 at around 12:18AM.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 9: Moon ring
Info. On a cold, (partly) cloudy night last November, I was out during a large moon along with our winter-time buddy Jupiter. Like many times before under this moon and weather conditions, I observed a phenomenon known as a Moon ring. The ring itself is caused by light from the moon refracting off of ice particles high in the freezing clouds above. Because of this, Moon rings only appear on the coldest winter nights. Taken with Sony P73. Five seconds at 400 ISO.
Photographed on November 12, 2011 at about 2:27AM in my backyard.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
Image 10: Messier 13 "Great Hercules Cluster"
Info: Took 20 Luminances and 10 (for every) RGB. Applied new skills such as stretching though levels (GIMP alternative), Color balancing using color levels, cutting over-exposure by "burning," using brush subtract layering, and using the lasso to cut out specific bright regions. Didn't come out too fantastic.
Photographed at Mrs. Herrold's observatory on May 12, 2008 (14" SC with SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD)
Total Exposure time: 15 minutes RGB, + 3 minutes, 20 seconds Luminance.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2: Equipment: Yes
Image 11: Dark Frame Overlap Experiment
Info: I was out one clear night with my DSLR camera in my backyard, and I was wondering "what can a dark frame do for me?" I thought a dark frame would eradicate noise in the image, and so naturally I took many many frames at the same exposure times, ISO, white-balance, etc. I applied these frames only to discover that they simply corrected hot pixels on my CCD chip in my SLR. They did not reduce the noise caused by local light sources. So after this, I went on to discover that they can be used further to enhance images by applying them as overlays. I'm not sure what the purpose of this function is, but according to my image, It reduced the severity of light pollution in my original shot of Orion and greatly increased contrast with the nebula M42. As you can see in the blow-up, Messier 42 is accompanied by M43, sprouts wings, the outer-loop, and even that dark edge into the nebula. This is by far the most detailed wide-field image of Orion's belt region to date.
Photographed March 25, 2012 at 8:00PM
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Settings:
Focal length: 55mm
Exposure: 13s
F/ratio: F/5.6
ISO: 800
Taken at medium resolution (5.2Mp).
Image 12: Polaris AB
Info: I wanted to show you all a pretty interesting picture of this star. It's interesting because it takes into account the motion of the sky, and how it "moves" the least at the poles. According to my theory, I could have taken a shot of Polaris, without a motorized mount with a long exposure, without star trails in the image. The only processing I did was making the background a bit darker to eliminate light pollution. There is excessive noise because it is at a rather high ISO of (1600 or 2400) and a 30 second shot.
Photographed March 16 2012, at 9:44PM (at Ligett field) through my Zhumell telescope (w. barlow lens) and Sony DSLR.
Requirements:
1. When and where: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Image 13: Waxing Crescent
Info: By popular demand, here is my great image of the Waxing Crescent Moon. I venerate this as one of my best shots I have taken. This was back in the day where I only had the P73, the Zhumell, and GIMP alone. Today, I have made several corrections from the original, including but not limited to: Orientation flip, desaturation (remove unwanted yellow color and chromatic abberation), corrected color (improved contrast around the terminator), adjusted color levels (brighter regions no longer appear to be overexposed), and who couldn't forget an un-sharp mask. I don't know why they could possibly have different sizes
Photographed in my backyard on April 8, 2011 at 9:57PM.
Total Exposure time: 1/50s at 200 ISO.
Requirements:
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
Before/After:
Image 14: Messier 97 "Owl Nebula"
Info: After weeks of difficulty, I finally got a good image worthy of editing. The old images were overexposed shots of the background noise. So this is also the first image I did editing in MaximDL. I stacked the images 10 for each color filter for the RGB and added the luminance frame (10 Luminances) later in GIMP. For the RGBs, I used filters. The filters (Gradient, "Happy", and others that I don't know) all did the work for me. I only used the screen-stretch to get what I wanted. I did use GIMP in the final combination for adjusting color levels. No unsharp masks. Taken with 14" SC with Mrs. Herrold's SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD, at her Arizona observatory on December 26, 2009 at 5:30AM.
Total Exposure time: 10 minutes RGB, + 40 seconds Luminance
Requirements:
1. Where and when: Yes
2. Equipment: Yes
3. Exposure: Yes
4. History: Yes
Image 15: IC 1396 "Elephant Trunk" (Misty Mountain)
Info: These RAWs were taken at the Misty Mountain observatory on 10/06/04. I downloaded the 40MB per-file LRGB and stacked them, edited, and combined them to this less-than-modest result. I still have no idea as to how the owner of these shots created such fantastic results with the same images. In GIMP and SalsaJ, not one tool was able to bring out the incredible red nebulousness as seen in the final result. I am oblivious to their technique. This is simply the best of what I can make with the "traditional" route of limited adjustments in GIMP and SalsaJ with the Levels and Color curves. Perhaps I am simply not proficient enough. Never the less, it is an interesting shot of this dark nebula. Shot with a 32" Ritchey-Chretein at F/7.2 Prime-focus with a SBIG STL-11000 CCD. According to SalsaJ however, these are single 300s RGBs with a single 300s Luminance. So maybe it's just that instead. Specifically, I tried to independently process the RGBs, but this resulted in an unbalanced background color. So instead, I went to GIMP and went through the optimizations (Levels and curves), and checking the results. In the end, I came out with this mixture of Black sky, Red nebula, and yellow stars. In the first image (not posted), I actually misplaced the Green for Red, but I think this time it actually works. Applied a weak un-sharp mask.
Total Exposure time: 15 minutes RGB, + 5 minutes Luminance.
_
Quarter 4
Image 16: Ursa Major (The "Big Dipper")
Info: My first shots taken at NRAO that I intended for processing. Why did I take a shot at such an everyday constellation? I was inspired by an image found on Astronomy Magazine's APOD, which showed the Big Dipper almost as you see here. I am partly unsurprised at the quantity of stars versus the shots that I have taken in my own yard. To my surprise, this was the clearest night (first night) versus the last night. It was partly cloudy this night, but between the clouds in was nearly 4/5 (or better) transparency. So what did I do? To even get the shots that I wanted, I took five 30 second exposures and stacked them. Man, do I really like the burst mode on that camera. All I have to do is set the exposure, the 10s timer, press shutter, and walk away. The camera does everything. It takes five consecutive pictures (does not wait to process between images; it actually processes the shots while it takes the next picture). So after going inside and getting some refreshments, I walked out to see the excellent results that are now appear before you on this webpage. Of course processing wasn't as easy. There was a natural green tone (I have observed this at every dark sky I have ever been to) which I had to balance. I adjusted color curves and levels to improve my signal:noise ratio. The beautiful blue stars that you see are not entirely natural. I actually added the glow effect by using the "supernova" light effect and changed the size/brightness/color to each star's characteristics. Erased dead pixels by copy/pasting noise over them. Works every time. Oh, and by the way, can you spot M101? I know it's not very clear, but it's there. If you know where to look (look in stellarium) then you can see a faint blob right where it should be. It's not really a surprise though, seeing as M101 is relatively bright at 7.70 magnitude. Oh, and I just found out recently that you can also spot the Whirlpool M51 too. Although dimmer at magnitude 8.4, this object is much more compact that M101, meaning it's light is compressed and therefore easier to see. It is best seen on the original (uncompressed) image.
As far as processing goes, its once again the same straight forward method. Go into levels, adjust the dark input until background light is dissipated. Then, you can advance the white input to add brightness. Adjust the middle to your liking. With curves, I further attempted to limit background light by putting down the "dark area" of the curve histogram (this is the main one, not RGB). I then adjusted curves independently for RGB. I particular, I upped the blue on the far right of the histogram to increase the amount of blue in the image. That didn't work so well, so I went to "color balance" and upped the blue in the image to help with the overall appearance. I have noticed that blue pictures look better than others, so I stuck with the blue colors instead of any kind of green or red. Also, blue represents the color of stars better. Applied a default unsharp mask with the radius increased only slightly (+0.2).
Photographed on April 11, 1:38AM.
Total exposure: 2 minutes, 30 seconds @ ISO 400, F/4.5 with a Sony a230 DSLR
Image 17: GBT Panorama
Info: I was originally going to make and all-sky map of the constellations in NRAO, but apparently 30-40 seconds is too much of a time interval, in which the stars will shift too much to be captured all on the same picture at once. So instead, I settled with two images that both had the GBT (or at least a part) in them. In the initial compile, I knew it wouldn't be too good of an image. First of all, they are single-stacks, so of course the stars won't be too impressive. Second, the CCD's bias will make the edge of one frame "stick out" when next to the other. Third, the ISO is too high. Although though the camera is rated for a maximum of 3200 ISO, the camera starts to get severe noise in long-exposures in even 400 or 200 (only in very, very long exposures) ISO. Fourth, I took these at medium resolution (5.2Mp), so real detail will be restricted from view. Fifth, it wasn't 100% clear. It was kind of hazy, which may block out stars (but will also add a nice effect to the image, as you can see it reflects near-by cities and also appears an opaque shadow as it passes over the Monongahela forest. Photographed on April 12, 11:47PM.
Total exposure: 30s exposure @ 800 ISO, F/3.5 with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 18: (GBT) Stellar RainsInfo: This image was somewhat of a disappointment; and it is clear why. To my exact expectations, it would not be even close to 100% clarity one the one "clear" that we were supposed to get. Oh well. That didn't stop me from experimenting with the camera's bulb setting, and pushing farther than I ever had a chance to do so. With such dark skies, I was confident that I could easily take exposures in terms of minutes (rather than seconds) and still get trails without excessive skyglow. Although the effect is still apparent in this image (due to haze), it is still an adequate example as I was still able to capture (about) eight minutes of star movement. Some interesting facts about this picture: The GBT was moving during the exposure. This is actually two shots (a single 6-minute plus a 2-minute), requiring me to draw-in the gaps made by the processing time of the camera. Even though it was cloudy, it was still 6x darker than my sky here in Harper Woods. The Milky Way is not in this image. We had to walk 100 feet away (into the airfield) from the observing deck to get away from the sun-like streetlights. We were getting the stars while everyone else was hiking in the freezing cold. Seen on the right, the star that fades is going behind a cloud. The 6-minute exposure used was the longest single exposure I have ever taken (with exception to the 500-second test shot I took in my room). Taken at NRAO on 4/12/2012 at 10:54PM
Total exposure: 8-minutes (@ 200 ISO, 28mm F/4.5) with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 19: The Polaris Swing
Info: After I was finally done imaging the GBT, I made an improvised attempt to capture star motion around Polaris. This is my first attempt ever. As you can see, it is very close to rubbish, so I will admit. As far as stacking went, it was relatively simple. Just add the stacks as they are (no rotations necessary). Before I started getting crazy with color alterations, I first had to deal with the strange vertical line phenomenon. I don't have an explanation for this, but the 5.6Mp shots that I took were all patterned, like flannel. There were annoying vertical and horizontal (well, those weren't so bad as the vertical ones) lines that threatened to destroy the entire image. However, GIMP came to the rescue. I had noticed a "Deinterlace" feature that mostly eliminated these lines at a cost of sharpness. I also experimented with "Despeckle," but got nowhere. So continuing, I then started attempts to rid an awful shade of green (commonly noticed on all of the sky-scenes I have taken at dark skies), only to bring more colors into the mix. At least it's not as bad as it used to be. You can still detect lots of green, but not there is red near the bottom left, and blue in the upper corners. I decided these were the best colors, or else I may have to settle with some boring B&W pictures with no feeling or mood to the scene. On the other hand, I kind of like the random shades, that give the image some artistic value (IMO). My best explanation on why this is crap is the weather. Much like the GBT startrails, there was an excessive amount of haze that floated about making the perfect exposure difficult. What's even worse is that you have no sense on what would be the best value of White Balance in skies as dark as these. Used the 5-shot burst mode five times to accumulate 25 individual frames for stacking. Photographed at the NRAO observatory on 4/12/2012 at 11:24PM
Total exposure: 12 minutes, 30 seconds (twenty-five 30s exposures, stacked) at ISO 200, F/3.5 with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 20: Moon; HDR
*THIS WAS ALL DONE IN GIMP ADDITION 2.6*
Info: Lo and behold, one of the few images of the Moon that you will ever see that is neither under or over exposed. As you can see, this image incorporates both faint and bright elements. The unlit side of the moon is preserved, while the face is near perfect exposure. So I bet you are wondering: How did he do that? Well, thankfully, it is very simple, and I believe that there is no way to over-simplify the process. There is nothing special about this image in terms of exposure. I did not use some special filter, the PERFECT exposure (some ridiculous fraction like 384/1 instead of 500/1). I did not even use a special camera/telescope lens. Just my trusty Dob (with 30mm EP) and the Sony DSLR. What is special, however, is that this is not ONE image. It is actually three. So, you must wonder, what layer settings did I use. Was it addition? Subtraction? A combination of two, or other filters? No, to anyone's surprise, I actually kept my hands off the layer settings (Normal mode). What I did mess with was the order of exposure, and a 'new' tool called "Layer Mask." Now I don't know exactly what a "Layer Mask" does, but what I do know is that you have to mess with it. Since the tutorial I was reading was designed for Photoshop, I had to do some digging around myself. I ended up with the (inverted) "Grayscale copy of image" option. Apply this twice, and then invert the color of one of the layers. Concerning the layers and exposures, you start with what you are working with. Take one image at the "correct" (it is not really correct, your light meter will lie to you because it doesn't know what is considered "correct" in such an extreme case) exposure . Then, take two more shots at slower and quicker exposures. In the tutorial, they say that +0.7 and -0.7 exposures are adequate for capturing all the details. However, this is astronomy. Our cases are much, much more extreme. For example, you may have to shoot more than +2.0 or -2.0 to get the right balance in such an extreme. In this scenario, the exposures range greatly; from a 1/125 second base, with a (+2.0) 1/2 second and a (-2.0) 1/320 second exposure. To make things simple, I name each file according to the exposure. The +0.0 is "Neutral," the +2.0 "over," and the -2.0 is "under." In GIMP, I place the neutral in first, then the under, and finally the over. Now apply the same mask twice (described above), and invert the "under" frame with the color tools. Behold, you have now created a masterpiece (although this is still in the primitive stages with much work to be done). Below the Moon are the under/over exposure with the neutral. Tip: Make sure your images are aligned!
Okay, so apparently I didn't explain this well enough.
You will use GIMP, because I do not posses that program and therefore have limited access.
The basic concept:
You will be taking THREE images of the same object, with DIFFERENT exposures. The exposure difference can be purely arbitrary, but generally the idea is to keep a range that isn't so extreme that one picture is black from under exposing and the other is just white. In photography, we have a Light Meter. We use this meter to expect how our pictures will turn out in terms of brightness for the "correct exposure." The scale ranges from -2 to +2, with .33 increments. So, for example:
-2 -1.6 -1.3 -1 -.06 -.03 0 +.3 +.6 +1 +1.3 +1.6 +2
You want to be at 0 for the "correct exposure"
When I am talking about shifts above, I am talking about upping or lowering the exposure so the meter meets +2 or -2 or whatever value you choose. Again, it is your choice. In this particular shot, I did 0 +/-2 increment shifts.
Total exposure: Combination of 1/125 second, 1/2 second, and 1/320 second.
Took all of these shots on 4/27/2012! Used a Sony a230 DSLR with a Zhumell 8" Dob
Image 21: Der Mond
Info: All of the same steps were taken from the HDR moon. In fact, this is the same thing, but edited further to what I am kind of looking for. I have not mastered the art of getting everything, so I shot for another goal to make something a little more to appreciate. As you can see, there is a sharp contrast in comparison to the above HDR moon. All I did, was use the level tool in GIMP to adjust the black limit to void everything you see in the picture, and limit white to the preserved white you see at the far right in this image. I also desaturated the image to eliminate obvious false color from camera and lens defects. I also rotated the image to what we are used to see, and cropped the image to a square.
This is the exact same picture as above. So naturally, the dates and exposure times are the same, as well as the camera.
Image 22: Messier 17 "Omega Nebula"
Info: Boy, what a good choice that was! As a visual observer, I often take the time to admire the Summer's best show of nebulae in our galaxy. Of the many nebulae, M17 must be one of the more astounding objects within the heart of the galaxy. I am glad to see that M17 is just as pleasing in this photo as it is visually. From my experience, this is probably the best quality of RAWS taken my Mrs. Herrold. Maybe it's just because M17 is a bright source, I don't know. Any way, it is a great image and was very fun to process in no more than a half an hour. I was going to use a consistent amount of stacks, but I then realized that colors would be unbalanced, and the Luminance would be very dim. So instead, I used all of the provided images to end up with this. Used color balance to eliminate blue/green background gradient. Enhanced reds. Applied a sample of "Tone Mapping" and "Levels."
The levels were used to get rid of some background noise, and the black limiter reduced pixel values so that I could still keep some nebulosity while eliminating most of the background. White was adjusted to bring out more of the nebula.
Taken by Mrs. Herrold on June 22, 2012. (DPO, AZ)
SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD, 14" Schmidt Telescope
Total exposure time: 3 minutes, 24 seconds (one minute each for R, G, B, and 24s CLEAR)
Image 23: Stargaze
Info: I will have to admit, I think this is probably one of my favorite images. It didn't dome out as well as I wanted, and as usual I had to do a lot of work just to get it to where it is now. Something I am very fond of is the need to finish startrails in between exposures. It is a very tedious process, copying and pasting stars from each exposure to connect them, but otherwise it would look very unprofessional and incomplete. So, into the meat of the image, this is a stack of 24 30-second ISO 200 exposures (12 minutes total)(at F/3.5), for a total exposure time of 12 minutes, which are not aligned to show the Milky Way in a still position. Rather, we see how our Earth's rotation leaves the streaks of stars behind. My biggest problem with this shot (besides finishing the star trails) was getting the images aligned after moving the tripod. I had to stack them in groups of 3 (8exposures each) to get not only the movement corrected, but to also keep GIMP running (it freaks out if you load more than 8 images when the memory usage exceeds 2GB of RAM). Normally, I would extensively use curves to bring out more detail and kill light pollution. This time, in these skies, I didn't need to, so I kept it how it is and focus on the more technical problems such as dead pixels and stripes in the image. The vertical stripes (some are still shown if you know where to look) were partially eliminated by the deinterlace function. I kept default values because the other options did nothing. To reduce the hot pixels I just copy/pasted random segments of the image around. This was particularly easy when removing them in the tree silhouettes where all I have to do is just color them black. Visible in this image are: Cygnus, Red lights, many tripods, Zach, the 20" scope, and me.
Photographed by me on 5/19/2012 at Gladwin, MI. with my Sony a230 DSLR
Image 24: Messier 101
Like most RAWS that I receive, I get serious doubt about their potential. I have learned from this image (in particular) to ignore the suggestion of a bad image in the future. This image was especially daunting because it was actually MISSING one RAW from green and blue, the main colors for this image. The process to this picture was the usual for just about every other picture: Put all reds in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. So for example I have one picture that is now comprised of seven RAWS for one shot. Repeat this for green, blue, and luminance. Put all greens in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. Put all blues in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings. Put all luminances in GIMP. Use "addition" layer settings... Now make sure you have all four images (Luminace, Red, Green, Blue) saved as flat TIFF files (it will ask you to merge or flat when you "Save as..."). They are all separate. Since my setup consists of only the primitive programs, I will be using SalsaJ for the color RGB combination. This process is simple, but is complicated by automatic features that actually disrupt the process. Before you start creating the color image, open each the final red green and blue images you just made in GIMP. I do this by keeping a folder open (containing each RGB file), and dragging and dropping the file into SalsaJ. Now you will notice that the colors may be exaggerated or be untrue to what you made in GIMP. To bypass this, go to the "brightness and contrast." At the bottom of the menu, click "Reset." Do this for every image that you pull up (Red, Green, Blue).You will now have the original pictures you had just made in GIMP. Next, go to "Image," then "Stacks," then click "Images to stack." When you do this, the color planes will be out of alignment due to faults and other errors. To fix this, go to "Plugins," click "Align R/G/B planes." You will get a menu which asks for what plane you wish to adjust. Start with the one that is mostly out of alignment. With the pixel value defined in the box, just click the arrows until you see stars aligning with other the other planes. Do the same thing with any other planes that are not aligned fully. Once this is complete, you are ready to save as a composite RGB file, which will define color in the image. Click "File," then "Save As," and hit the type of file you want. I will suggest TIFF because it is much more friendly to other programs than RAW FITS files. Now you are ready to go back to GIMP for fixing the luminance and adding color. Open your Luminance in GIMP. This is what mine looked like just from adding everything. No editing:
It's meh, okay, but nothing close to excellent. The first thing to do is adjust the color Levels. Click "Colors," and then "Levels..." To eliminate the grey background, increase the dark value of the "Input." A good value for this particular image is 24. You will notice that the background is indeed darker, but so is the galaxy you are trying to bring out. To resurrect it, reduce the white value in "Input." This value should be around 60 for this specific image. The middle mover is less important, but you should adjust it to your liking. I would suggest the value to be about 0.8 or higher. You should get something like this:
Huge improvement, no doubt. Now you can add color! Before you do, click "Image," then "Mode," then "RGB."
With this file still open, open the RGB file you just made in SalsaJ. Because the RGB is a lo-res color file, you have to scale it to the luminance. So click the "Scale Tool" in your "Toolbox." Still in your Luminance, on the upper left part of the screen, it should mention the resolution.
In the scale tool, put this resolution in the values after clicking the image with this tool. Click "Scale." Reduce Opacity (with Layers Window) to see if the layers are still aligned. Odds are that the image will still be out of alignment. Move them into place with the "Move Tool" (found in Toolbox). To apply color, select a Layer function/mode. Rather than some other images, I actually used the Overlay mode instead of "Addition." Some brightness will disappear. To bring it back, once again go to into "Levels..." Bring down the white value in "Input" to about 72 for example.
You may notice that the red emission nebulae are absent. Bring them back with color Curves. Hopefully you can learn more about this with Alison, but what I found is that values at the end of the histogram adjust colors that are separate from the rest of the image. Follow this as an example:
That's pretty much it. That is the exact method I followed, not just for this image but for practically every other shot here. For any other adjustments, I would recommend that you Save and Flatten the image first. I did so, and here are the before and after results. Not much to me, but you're the critic.
Imaged by Mrs. Herrold at DPO with her 14" Schmidt and a SBIG SME ST-402ME CCD on January 19, 2009 for a total exposure time of 180s luminance, 105s Red, 90s Green, and 90s Blue (7 minutes, 45 seconds)
Image 25: Jupiter Redux
I recently took a look back at some rejected pictures of Jupiter through my DSLR, and after some tweaking, they are easily comparable to my best shot taken with the older Sony. They feature the GRS quite well, as you can see. Sifting through these images quickly, I did not bother to look for hidden detail. One night, when I was bored of watching the clouds go by, I looked at some of these pictures on my camera. Zooming in, I noticed some detail. when I tilted the screen (darker image), even more detail appeared. The next day, I put this image in GIMP and did some magic. I lowered the color curve and saw detail come into the picture. It's still not the greatest, but it's very close to what I've made so far with the older camera. Naturally, I used an Unsharp mask (default settings) to bring more into the image. Just recently I increased the color curves on the right end to make the image brighter while preserving detail. Then, I took another shot, increased brightness enough to bring out moons, and pasted the new Jupiter over the former place of the planet (on the brighter shot). Image cropped and rotated (inverted).
Taken through my Z8 telescope on 12/10/2011 at 11:30PM at my house.
both shots are at 1/30s exposure times at 800ISO with Sony a230 DSLR
Image 26: Messier 11
Due to the absence of requested files, I am forced to process a different image. Downloaded from Misti Mountain, this is an image of Messier 11, the Wild Duck Cluster. Since the observatory only provides the single frames (red, green, blue, and luminance), this picture was very easy. All I had to do was put the frames into SalsaJ. Man, that equipment is flawless! None of those frames were out of alignment. Incredible. So anyways, I combine them and save as .TIFF and start on their qualities in GIMP. In GIMP, I was amazed with how bright these objects can get. With the absence of light pollution, I can shoot the light levels so high that the image is four times brighter without consequence. Of course I might have to settle down the background noise with a little black, as seen in this screenshot:
VS...
As you can see, without these limits, I am able to really push forward to make an astounding addition to the picture. For the final touch, I did the same with the Luminance, and balanced color to blue rather than the ugly green you see here. The final picture is made of this and the luminance with the "Color" layer mode.
Taken at the Misti Mountain Observatory for an 11-minute clear, 6-minute Red, 6-minute Green, and 6-minute Blue (29 minutes) on 8/30/04
Shot with a 32" Ritchey-Chretein at F/7.2 Prime-focus with a SBIG STL-11000 CCD.
Image 27: Transit of Venus:
Ah, look at that! You'd ought to know what this is. If you don't I'm assuming you never got to witness the event. On June 5, the planet Venus passed in front of the solar disk for the only time in our lifetimes. It will not occur again until at least December 2117. Visually observing the event, however, was probably much more fascinating than what you see in this picture. Just seeing it for a split second while other people are rushing to see it themselves was amazing. There it is, just floating in front of the sun. Being used to how small Venus appears in the high during twilight, I was surprised to see how big this sphere was when it became a silhouette in this event. This event reminds me much like that scene in the movie Sunshine. Have you seen it? You should have. By no doubt were we amazed just as the people in this scene:
As far as processing goes, I did little because it's not like a normal astrophoto. The first thing I did was to apply an Unsharp mask with default settings. To make the image a little more realistic, I did something Bob Berta showed us before. I desaturated the image, and then colorized the picture to the color you see here. I then reduced the light curves to see more of the sunspot details, and possibly some solar grainage. I don't know if it really is grain, because my camera (even at low ISO speeds) has a bad tendency to create lots of noise/grain.
Photographed at GPN, with a 90mm Mak-Cas at prime-focus (with white-light solar filter) coupled with a Sony a230 DSLR (1/60s, ISO 400, F/13.8) on June 5 2012.
Note: Those are not rings! By the time clouds cleared, the sun was low, including these telephone wires and a tree in the picture.
To be continued...?